Conventionally, a media gateway is chosen either based on its location, the location of a requesting client, or both. Media gateways may also be chosen through load-balancing based on the current workload that is distributed over alternative gateways. The former approach overlooks the fact that physical distance does not always correlate to network performance. The latter approach fails to address the varying patterns and requirements of multiple media streams involved in, for example, a web conference call. For example, audio traffic can be smooth while video traffic can have numerous spikes, and audio traffic may be more delay-sensitive than video traffic. Additionally, user preferences, device type, and communication style may result in different network requirements and priorities on a user-by-user basis.
Accordingly, both conventional approaches can lead to sub-par performance in a variety of situations, and as such, it would be desirable to provide an improved ability to perform resource selection.
Although there has been much improvement to the quality of Voice over IP (VoIP), the quality can still fluctuate significantly due to the dynamic nature of underlying networks and can be affected by various factors such as jitter, latency and bandwidth. There is a definite need to mitigate the occurrence of media quality issues to deliver a good collaboration experience to end users.
Subscription-based Cloud Collaboration Services have made consuming services more cost efficient for Enterprises and Collaboration Service Providers. Subscription-based Cloud Collaboration Services generally operate with a “best effort” routing through communication networks (e.g., the Internet). Accordingly, traversing a network using “best effort” removes the Enterprises and Collaboration Service Providers ability to control the end-user media experience.